Walter had insisted they each wear a miner’s hat with a battery-operated light just above their foreheads but Declan’s went out, and Thomas kept shining his into the others’ eyes, blinding them. Alastair Wyland insisted they forego the damned hats.
But they left the paltry lights on the helmets as they went down and down into the black hole, it grew darker and danker. To while away the time, Wyland gave the boys a history and economics lesson.
“You know boys, given the recent backroom deals surrounding these giant ships the White Star Line is having built in Belfast? Brings prosperity, jobs, and management believes themselves saints for supplying jobs to working men—miners, shipyard workers, tugboat captains and crew, but they’ll be hiring on British crews for their Olympic class monsters like Titanic just as they did with the Olympic launched in October 1910.”
“The British are paying the freight… it’s a British held company.”
“Not anymore, lads.”
“What do you mean?”
“As early as 1869 J. Bruce Ismay’s father, Henry formed the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company in order to establish the White Star Line as a high-class steamship service in the Atlantic passenger trade, and he contracted his first ships to be built by Belfast shipbuilders Harland & Wolff. All rather hush-hush until the son took over in 1891 when under pressure, Ismay admitted to partnership of the White Star Line. He then took over completely after his father's death in ’99.”
“What’s this to do with us going down into the mines?”
“Getting to that. In ’94, William J. Pirrie became chairman of Harland & Wolff. And four years later, American author Morgan Robertson published his novel entitled Futility in which a British passenger liner called the Titan—get it?—hits an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage without enough lifeboats in the month of April in the North Atlantic. The fictional ship is eerily similar to the yet-to-be conceived Titanic in size, speed, equipment, numbers of passengers—both rich and poor. And in the end of the novel, the number of passengers who perished, God forbid, would be the same as on Titanic should she go down in the North Atlantic.”
“A novel… so what? Fiction is frivolous,” said Thomas. “What’s it to do with—”
“Robertson had information on the company—an insider feeding him information; the company planned to build three Olympic class ships they called unsinkable from the outset. Morgan Robertson’s book, which I’ve read, is a running history of how Titanic, Olympic, and the yet to be built Britannic were conceived by men interested in money and power.”
“This is fascinating,” commented Declan. “Go on.”
“Well in 1902, the White Star Line was purchased by the International Mercantile Marine Company, a shipping trust headed by U.S. financier J. Pierpont Morgan.”
“Hold on,” said Declan, “do you mean the same J.P. Morgan who operates the largest transportation lines and all the trains in America?”
“One and the same, yes. While the White Star’s ships still fly the British flag and carry British crews, the company is essentially controlled by American interests, and by ’04, Ismay, now age forty or so—with Morgan’s full support—becomes President and Managing Director of International Mercantile Marine with complete control.”
“And why is that a bad thing?” asked Thomas. “I smell something awful; you smell that?”
“Yeah,” added Declan. “Smells like decay.”
Alastair ignored this, continuing his tale. “Another thing, Morgan Robertson is related to Morgan—hence the name, but he’s a black sheep member. And another thing—”
A sudden jolt and the platform beneath their feet shuddered, but as the shaft was tight on all sides, they didn’t fear falling from either side, at least not yet. They heard something beneath them tumble as if caught on a rock and the platform had sent whatever it was hurtling downward with a rattling bumpity-bump pounding their ears. Still the platform continued on, lowering them still deeper.
In unison, the detective and the young interns breathed a sigh of relief, and Wyland continued his history lesson as if nothing had happened. “As well, Harland & Wolff chairman William J. Pirrie became that same year a director of Mercantile Marine.”
“All rather chummy,” said Thomas.
“Inbred is what it is,” Declan replied. “And the public knows naught of it?”
“At a dinner party in 1907, held at William J. Pirrie's London mansion, Ismay discussed the construction of two huge ships—with a third to be added later—and the young author was in attendance to hear their plans; it gave him the insidious idea to make himself happy by fictionally sinking their plans before they’d begun if he could convince a publisher to take on his hair-brained novel entitled Titan. But back to the London party—it was all to do with competing, you see, with the luxury, size, and speed of rival cruise lines. These Olympic-class ships were to be known as the greatest and fastest liners afloat, intended specifically to beat out the Cunard Line for the Atlantic luxury passenger trade.”
“You make it sound so criminal,” countered Thomas Coogan. “It is called free enterprise… capitalism.”
“Not my point.”
“What then?”
“July 29, 08.”
“What about it?”
“The White Star owners, including Ismay, approved in principle the design plan for the Olympic class ships prepared by builders Harland & Wolff under direct supervision of Lord Pirrie, with the assistance of his nephew Thomas Andrews—architect of the ships.”
“Yes, all in the family.” Declan worked the lever to slow the platform here where the shaft narrowed about them.
“I met the author, Robertson, once—had a bright son named Stephen who was fascinated with law enforcement and the science of detection back in… in Boston. At any rate, Robertson showed me a duplicate copy of a contract letter dated July 31st of that year; a letter signing off on construction in the Belfast shipyards for Olympic, Titanic, and a third sister ship at the time unnamed but to follow. In part it read ‘Ultimate decisions of design, equipment, and decoration are to be made by J. Bruce Ismay. The size of Titanic will be 882 feet 9 inches long, 94 feet wide, and 100 feet high to the bridge level. Final cost: £1,500,000 or approx. $7,500,000. New docks had to be built in Belfast, Southampton, and New York to accommodate the size of these ships. Harland & Wolff built specially strengthened slips to take their weight, and a new gantry under which these gargantuan ships would be built.”
“You tell a rambling tale, sir,” interrupted Thomas. “To the point, perhaps?”
“Thomas! Where are your manners?”
“I left them in the world above.”
“Ah, it’s no matter, Declan,” replied Wyland. “Frankly at my age, I know that the more sense I make, the less anyone cares to hear it. Or perhaps it was always that way!” He laughed at his own remarks.
“Oh but sir, please go on. I am something of a big fan of Titanic; I wish to hear all of it.”
“Wellll now… as planned, December 16th the keel for the first ship is laid down at Harland & Wolff’s slip number 400 and Olympic construction begins, as you likely know; at any rate, this was quickly followed March 31st of ’09 when Titanic’s keel was laid down in yard number 401 and Titanic—”
“Yes, where Titanic construction began.”
“And now here we are today with Pinky’s guarding her and anarchists wanting to blow their precious plans to kingdom come. Now mysteriously three men who in one manner of another are associated with the yards’ve vanished. Gentlemen, it smacks of anarchy or monies to be had, and quite possibly blackmail.”
“Blackmail?”
“How so?”
“Suppose the three had devised a scheme to reveal all the fictional elements of Robertson’s book as fact? The hidden details of all that has gone on behind closed doors regarding Titanic and her sister ships?”
“It just sounds so far-fetched,” said Thomas.
“But think of it, Thomas—information like that, The Cunard Line would kill for
that kind of paperwork, the designs, White Star’s plans.” Declan nodded successively.
“It’s not as if we’re talking government secrets, envoys, and battle plans,”
countered Thomas.
“Oh but it is,” said Wyland.
“Have ye no imagination, Thomas?” asked Declan. “It makes sense in a world
where, more and more, information is knowledge, knowledge is power, and power
converts to money.”
“Makes no damn sense to me! Again, sir, you’re implying some dirty
underhanded dealings!”
“Easy lad!”
“Uncle Anton was in no schemes or dirtiness! I won’t have it.”
“But given the size of the powers they may have been going after, perhaps your uncle saw it as fair play perhaps, and not at all evil to involve himself since no Irishman good enough to burn rivets into the hull of this monster’s good ’nough to serve tables on her!”
Thomas fell silent, giving this some thought. “I know my uncle has a keen sense of justice.” Then Thomas’ nose began twitching uncontrollably. “Gawd, that’s a putrid stench, isn’t it?”
“You’re right about that!” agreed Alastair even as his own nose began to twitch.
“That smell,” began Declan. “Worse than the dissecting room, eh, Tommie?” “Smell of death for sure.”
“Coming up the shaft.”
“How far down does this damn thing go?” Wyland was having second thoughts about the wisdom of coming into this inky black hole when the platform hit bottom and tilted sharply, hanging there. The jolt knocked Thomas into Declan and the boys fell; Wyland had grabbed onto a railing and kept his feet.
“What’ve we hit?” asked Declan.
“Most likely whatever it was fell earlier from the rock ledge.” Wyland trained his lantern over the side of the lift, dust raining round them even as the two lanterns illuminated a black torso—a dead man. “I believe we’ve found one of the missing men,” he calmly said.
Thomas rushed to Wyland’s side and held the second lantern over the body. “It’s not my uncle—too tall, too thin… besides it must have been here for weeks… if not months.”
“But how then… I mean anyone coming down the shaft had to’ve…” began Declan, shaking his head.
“Not here,” countered Wyland. “First off, no one wanted to come down; there’d been a cave-in here. Secondly, judging from the position of the body, it had to’ve been placed here—or perhaps dropped here.”
Declan worked to bring the lift up a foot, then two, trying to get it straightened out and hovering above the blackened body. “Never seen such absolute decay; not even our oldest corpses at the medical school look this bad—and trust me, they are vile.”
“I’ve seen a lot of dead men,” said Wyland, his gaze grim. “But nothing like this.”
“Who could it be if not O’Toole or McAffey?”
Wyland shone his light on a helmet nearby with the name McAffey across it, and he indicated stitching on the dead man’s blackened shirt, Tim M. it read, no doubt stitched on by a loving wife.
Using his wolf’s head cane to offset a serious limp, Wyland carefully made his way to a kneeling position over the body. Leaning in for a closer inspection, he snatched out a a handkerchief and placed it over his nose against an odor reminiscent of sulfur. “We’re bound to involve the police, have an inquest, have the body autopsied. Either of you boys want to find the nearest phone?”
“Back at the mining office—’less there’s a police call box closer, but without a key…”
“Smash it with a pick axe or something,” suggested Declan.
“Yes, you do that, Thomas. I suspect Walter will know where the man’s house is?”
“Most likely; the miners are a close knit bunch,” said Declan.
Thomas lingered to determine what Wyland was up to.
“Can I trust you to get this into Walter’s hands, and can we trust Walter to get it to the man’s wife?” Wyland extended a money purse he’d found on the corpse. “Things like this tend to get lost real fast when police arrive.”
Thomas had held himself in check to witness this exchange, and he nodded appreciatively before asking, “Nothing in the purse to identify the poor devil?”
Wyland shook his head and complained of how his shoes would never be the same, adding, “Purse is just shy of forty pounds, I’d say. No paper. Now be off with you both—Declan to see to the paltry sum, you, Thomas, to make that call.”
Thomas rushed off in search of the phone.
“We should get Dr. B to look this over,” said Declan, who had not budged. “See if he knows what killed this fellow, McAffey.”
“Dr. B?” asked Wyland.
“Bellingham, an excellent physician and inquest expert—teaches surgery at the Mater Infirmorum—our teaching hospital.”
“Whatever is going to work—and Thomas—do hurry. Getting ranker by the moment here.”
“Frankly, Mr. Wyland, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t remain here any longer.”
Declan’s remark halted Thomas who held the lift. “Are you two coming?”
“Need to do a bit of a walkabout,” said Alastair, but you go with Thomas, lad,” he added for Declan’s sake as an out for him.
Still Declan didn’t budge. “This man looks the victim of some awful disease—perhaps some form of a Bubonic Plague.”
Wyland added, “Oh dear, the Black Plague, you think?”
“Here in Belfast in 1912?” said Thomas from the lift platform.
“Not likely but who can tell, really.”
“Looks nasty enough to be a new strain of Black Plague; the disease took people’s lives overnight. Terrible scourge from all the etchings I’ve seen,” remarked Thomas.
“Can’t rule it out from down here, but it could as well be something else.”
“What else can you be talking about?” Wyland poked at the body with his cane.
“Something new, diseases crop up in the strangest of places.”
“Damn nasty business this underground work,” Wyland mused, looking at the sheared off ceiling and flashing his light about the wet, black reflecting walls.
“Wonder where the other miner is?” Declan muttered as if to himself.
“We’ll search the terminus of the shaft. But first, let’s get this man onto the platform so when Thomas goes up for help, we have the body at the surface for this Dr. Bellingham to examine.”
The three of them took careful hold of the absolutely stiff man who seemed more like a log than anything human, and they placed the corpse onto the lift. “Get him topside while we investigate further,” said Wyland to Thomas who needed no second telling. While riding up to the surface with the awful corpse, Thomas cupped his hands and shouted to Declan and the detective, “Damn thing looks like a blackened mummy!”
But Alastair Wyland had already set out searching about the mine, thinking the second missing miner—at very least—must be down here and whoever claimed to have seen him leaving the shaft had it wrong; as to the shipyard watchman, Thomas’ uncle, he hadn’t a clue.
Declan followed in Wyland’s wake as now there was only one lamp, and every corner here was blacker than an Irish midnight.
The lantern picked up the area where the shaft roof had collapsed, and at the base of the scattered loosened rock fall, lying in a silence as deep as an empty forest grave, there lay the body—covered in a tarp. “See that? It’s gotta be the other miner.” Alastair was excited, and he momentarily wondered if the families of the men might spread the word about his powers of detection, although he had done nothing save travel down into the mine shaft that others feared. The thought made him silently chuckle.
“Is he… is he like the other one?” asked Declan, shaken on seeing the prone misshapen figure below the thick green tarp.
“We’ll have to get him topside with the other one, sort ’em out. Figure which is which.” Wyland then noticed something distinctly different about this corpse and wondered if the tarp cut the odor. “You notice that?” he asked.
“What? What is it?”
“This one doesn’t smell so awful as the other fellow.”
“What killed them?” Declan asked, ignoring Wyland’s confusion.
“That’s the real mystery, now isn’t it?” Wyland snatched the tarp away in his best magician form, fully expecting to have found Anton Fiore lying here dead if not O’Toole, but instead he and Declan were shocked to find a furry-faced, pained-looking, hoary wolf creature with a huge, ugly decayed snout, its eyes like dried prunes. The sight sent Alastair staggering back—and given his limp, he fell into Declan, almost losing his feet and taking the young man to him.
“What in God’s name!” gasped Declan, staggering back, now welcoming the dark corners.
“It’s some sort of beastie, I’d say.”
“Look at that snout; it’s no dog—yet it seems like a large dog, maybe a wolf?”
“I’ve not ever seen the like of it, but look at how dry the skin, and the eyes—like the fellow we sent up, two dry, hard orbs.”
“Mummified—both this animal and the miner.”
“Mummified? I saw no bandages!”
“I’ve seen mummies in the museum in Edinburgh and London, sir, unwrapped mummies. They appear like petrified wood.”
“We had Egyptian mummies represented at the great fair in Chicago, but they were well wrapped.”
“It’s as if…”
“As if what, Declan?”
Declan took the lantern from the detective and stepped closer, examining the dead creature. “It looks like some sort of prehistoric wolf or saber-toothed dog.”
“That’d be my guess—and look here.” He positioned Declan’s lantern and hand up to illuminate the wall to his right. I’d say it was buried here for a long time, entombed in this wall. Notice the shape of the remaining, scooped out section?”
“The miners dug it from the wall and here it lies, yes.”
“And if it’s carrying some ancient disease or organism?” asked Alastair, his nerves shot. “We’ve been exposed.”
“Almighty’s will be done if it’s to be done.”
“You’re fine with it at your age, but I intend to live a long life.” Alastair’s dark joke got no laughs. “Declan, I appreciate the difference in our ages—and should’ve insisted you get topside with your friend.” Alastair fell silent, contemplating the results of a plague rampaging through the already filthy streets of Belfast’s ghetto areas long before reaching out to other parts of the city. The poverty stricken would die in droves at the outset, and when finished there, it might well devastate the entire countryside, biting at the gentry and heads of state, at which point they might attempt to do something about it. He imagined that Declan, being a medical man, was giving into the same fears.
“If the corpse we sent up with Thomas is diseased and virulent,” began the young intern, “then it could spread about the city.”
“Yes, afraid we’ve made some bad choices for being such intelligent men.”
“The jutting shoulders of this thing,” said Declan of the beast. “And you see the size of the fang there? Wonder where the other fang might be.”
Using his cane, Alastair tried to turn the monstrous snout here in the dark shaft, but he found it stiff as cord wood, unmoving. “Dry and stiff as bone,” he muttered.
“Like the miner we sent up—” gasped Declan—“yet this carcass is ancient, and he… his corpse only hours old.”
“I suspect that O’Toole and McAffey had some reason to dig this thing out of the wall, and things went bad from there.” Alastair poked at the monster with his cane. “Likely placed the tarp over the thing, then boarded the lift, readying to find the surface, but you saw where the one had fallen or been forced over the side of the lift, then caught on a ledge until we landed on the man’s body. If it’s McAffey we sent up, O’Toole got out and into the world.”
“You think they fought over a damn fang?”
“I don’t know that it was the fang they fought over, but do you see the second miner here?”
“Well… no.”
“I saw a chain with a hook hanging on a peg behind us,” continued Wyland, taking the lantern back to the spot where he’d seen the chain dangling on one wall. He returned with it, saying, “We hook this monster and send it up ahead of us, Declan, and then we get the devil outta here.”
“I’m with you. Place gives me the creeps.”
They soon had the crook-hook on the end of the chain attached to the strange discovery, and yanking on the chain which snaked up alongside the lift, they got a response, presumably from Walter, who began winding the crude winch which begged to be replaced. The animal carcass had been light in weight, dehydrated and ancient as it was, and it rained down a dust over the men below as the chain echoed a metallic screech down the shaft. The dry animal dust created a ghostly, curtain-like veil in the lantern light.
In the interim as they were discovering the beast in the mine shaft, topside Walter had had the presence of mind to return the lift back to them.
“Let’s get out of here, now!” Alastair shouted to Declan, and they leapt onto the lift platform. Declan and Ransom had both begun to cough in the confined shaft as they rode up below the animal carcass overhead. As they did so, Alastair’s cane tapped at an edge of the boards near Declan’s feet; so close came the tip of the wolf’s head cane that Declan jumped to avoid it.
“Look there!” said Alastair, tapping still. “More evidence the second man got out and away.”
“How can you be sure?”
He lifted the cane and pointed to where it had rested. “Do you see the swath of cloth caught on that nail, the concentration of hair? Someone—presumably O’Toole, who I learned from Walter was a heftier man than myself—kicked his superintendent off this platform as it lifted. Here, stop the lift.”
Declan immediately brought them to a halt. “What is it?”
“The rock face here… smeared with blackened flesh. It’s where the body had been resting before we hit it and sent it to the shaft floor.” Alastair placed his lantern close to the ledge he pointed at. “I’d noticed on the corpse, on the arm—a bad scrape but no redness, no blood. In fact, did you look at his eyes?”
“No, I did not, sir.”
“No, of course not; who looks a dead man in the eye? Only a fool, my mother would say.”
“I am proposing to be a doctor; I should do exactly that when confronted with a corpse.”
Alastair shrugged. “You’re not a doctor yet; you’re young. It’s natural to look away.”
“I’ll be a doctor in a few years; I’ve got to learn to be more observant. I should’ve looked into his eyes.”
“In this case, perhaps not.” With his cane, Alastair indicated up—signaling Declan to continue to send the lift upward again.
Declan swallowed hard and turned the switch for up. “What did you find in the eyes?”
“Dried pair of prunes, shriveled to nothing, yet intact—and yet with the level of decay to the body… makes no sense. There shouldn’t be anything whatsoever left of the soft tissue of the eyes.”
“But then in so short a period, the body shouldn’t be so far along in decay either, Mr. Wyland.”
“The eyes looked like shrunken little heads like those made by cannibals. Come to think of it, the entire body looked like those crazy shrunken heads I saw once at a huge fair that represented every race on the planet to us fairgoers.”
“The Chicago World’s Fair?” guessed Declan. “You saw the 1893 Columbian Exposition? Damn, I’d give anything to’ve seen that!”
“Yes… quite a show it was, too. Like all the world in one place.” This much was no lie, he thought, pleased with himself and the memory of being atop the Ferris Wheel with the love of his life, the woman he’d left behind, Dr. Jane Tewes, one of Chicago’s first female surgeons.
“You are old, aren’t you? I mean 1893—wow!”
“Come now, not that old. I am here, aren’t I? Climbing around in the rubble, breathing in this rotten corpse. God help us, son. If indeed this is the Black Plague come back to haunt mankind—figures it would start in Ireland.”
They fell silent with the thought. All around them the mechanical sound of the winch and the groaning boards of the lift below their feet filled their senses: the smell of earth, the dry, subtle stench of the corpse and its change of color as they rose toward the surface where Walter shined a light down to reveal others who’d taken an interest, peering down the shaft as well.
Wyland secretly worried who this might be alongside Walter topside. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his cane. He feared now that his little missing-persons case involved a corpse, he’d exposed himself far too much. The authorities could well focus on him, a thing he had so far avoided here in Belfast. He felt like kicking himself for having gotten involved. He feared the men with Walter were the local police.